Grimm's Law

DISCLAIMERS:

Some characters and elements of this story are the property of Thames/Tetra television, Nickelodeon, and Roger Price, used without authorization but with much gratitude. Any character bearing the surname Grimm, as well as assorted lesser beings, belong to me. Any similarities to people real or imagined is a coincidence.

"Grimm's Law" will be archived at the TPFICT archives, Paradigm Twist, and Alternate Realities site. Anywhere else, please ask first. This story cannot be sold or translated into any other form without written permission from the author. The author receives no compensation from the creation or distribution of this work.

SUMMARY:

Lisa dreams only of being left alone, until a girl who is alone walks into her dreams.

DEDICATION:

Happy birthday, TPFICT. The story is being posted in celebration of the list's 6th birthday.

RATING:

I pretty much rate all of my stories PG-13 by default. There're a couple instances of swears (the kind you'd hear on network television) and one instance of a racial slur, along with an instance or two of a character expressing a rather controversial viewpoint. To make it clear, there is a character in this story who is a racist. He uses racial slurs and expresses non-PC thoughts. You have been warned.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

"Grimm's Law" is set within the Tomorrow's Future time line. Sort of. I tried, I really did, but Lisa did not want to be a Watcher in this story. The end result is that this story is now officially TF AU. Fortunately, alternate universes are an established TF concept (how else could the universe cross over with Sliders?) This story is not a crossover piece at all; it is very strictly New Series Tomorrow People. It takes place after my previous TF story "The Atropos Project". "Grimm's Law" should make complete sense regardless of whether or not you've read "Atropos", but it might make more sense sooner if you have read it. It is not necessary to have any other familiarity with TF in order to understand this piece.

For purposes of continuity on the timeline, "Grimm's Law" occurs in December 1998, on a world that does not have Immortals (hence, no need for Watchers). For those who don't have the TF timeline in front of them, you should be aware that the dates of the show were altered to better fit with the other shows in the universe. In TF, "The Origin Story" takes place in 1995, with the other serials bumped up accordingly.

Thanks are due to many, many people. This story has been in works for 3 years, which means dozens of people have glimpsed some part of it in some incarnation or another. Thanks are due to (in no particular order) Caroline Fales, Beth Epstein, Michele Bumbarger, Selma McCrory and probably a bunch of other people who have helped in numerous ways big and small throughout the writing. Special thanks are due to: Todd Jensen who *may* have seen the Tomorrow People once as a kid, but who was still willing to cold read this story and make me answer some very important questions; Anne Olsen who has been on board since January of this year, and due to her constant prodding, and willingness to be a sounding board, actually made this story possible; Megan Freeman who has great potential to be a professional editor, and who wasn't afraid to say "do it again."; and my husband, Rob, who spent a whole Sunday doing the final editing with me.

Apologies are also due to Beth Epstein. Some time ago (perhaps best measured in years), she made an unofficial challenge for anyone to write a story in which the requisite mad scientist was not a geneticist. This story was intended to answer that challenge by pitting a mad linguist against the TP. This story was also intended to be a parody. Or possibly a comedy. It failed completely to be either of the latter two. There is a linguist in the story, but he's not mad. Sorry.

As always, questions, comments, and constructive critiques welcomed and encouraged at ladyslvr@xmission.com.

Chapter 1

"Lisa, are you feeling okay?"

"What?" Lisa looked up at her boyfriend, sitting across the small coffee shop table from her. The nub of one pencil stuck out from behind his right ear, while he tapped the gnawed end of another against his lower lip. "Yeah, I'm fine," she said.

Her words were almost lost in the hum of talk that filled the shop. It was early afternoon, yet the sun's last rays already shone through the front plate glass window onto the students seated at crowded tables. When the tables ran out, some students had even taken up positions on the floor, improvising chairs and tables out of backpacks and stacks of books. She and her boyfriend had been lucky enough to stake out an actual table, which was now obscured by a scattered assortment of papers and notebooks.

As the front door opened and closed with the traffic, gusts of chill air sweetened the burning leaves smell of coffee that filled the shop.

"Ya sure?" he asked, eyebrows creasing. "You look kinda distracted."

"I'm fine," she repeated. "I'm just worried about finals. You know. Greenberg's is going to *kill* me." She indicated the open notebook in front of her for emphasis. She was highlighting the few notes that applied to the class in a color scheme that was more aesthetic than useful. "1204? Did you write down what happened in 1204?" Lisa stretched across the table to get a better look at her boyfriend's notes. There wasn't that much to see. The college ruled page had a couple of lines at the top that might be course related, in a scrawling handwriting that was nearly impossible to read upside down. The rest of the page was, as near a Lisa could tell, devoted to song lyrics. "Did you even bother to take notes?" she asked, falling back into her seat.

"Sure," he answered. He flipped back a page. "See," he said, pointing to a block of text. "Here, and here." He went through the pages too rapidly for Lisa to verify what he was showing her.

"Okay," she said, "So, did you happen to write down what happened in 1204? It's going to be on the test. You know it is."

"What do your notes say?"

"September 29th. That was the day of the lecture. 'External History of English - Highlights'," she read aloud. "Then I have a list of dates: 449, 597, 865, 1066, and 1204. I didn't write down what happened on those dates."

"You even bother to take notes?" he mimicked.

"Yeah, yeah," she said, subdued. "I know it was something important, or it wouldn't be in here."

"Gimme." He grabbed her notebook away and started paging through it. "It can't be that important," he said, after a minute or so of looking. "You only have them in here once." He started to turn the page, then looked closer at what it said. "What do 'carpal', 'metacarpal', 'phalanges', 'ulna' and 'radius' have to do with English history?"

"They're words," she answered. "You know. Vocabulary words. They're, uh, descended from Latin and are, uh, you're not buying any of this are you?"

He shook his head, then gently reached over and took her hand and started to massage it. "I know this is a phalange," he said, touching her index finger. He rubbed each finger in turn saying, "and so is this one." The massage finished, he pulled her hand up to his mouth and kissed her palm. "You have beautiful hands."

"Thanks," Lisa answered, the glow of the attention heating up her face. The best part about being in a relationship, she decided, was the random compliments. Too bad finals were fast approaching and compliments didn't make good grades.

She pulled her hand back and deliberately opened the notebook to the page with the dates. "Adam, we need to study."

There was a slight pause in which everyone in the coffee shop seemed to stop talking. "Adam? Who's Adam?" he asked, then the noise started up again, louder.

"What?" Her voice caught as her words started to catch up to her. "Where'd you hear 'Adam'? I said Isaac." No she didn't. She knew what she had said. What she couldn't figure out was why she said it.

"You didn't. I know my name when I hear it. I didn't hear it. Who's Adam?" He let the pencil drop to the page and leaned back in his chair, as if to get a wider view of her.

"I must have gotten mixed up. It's a pretty common name." She protested, but didn't feel it.

"Lisa. You don't need to keep secrets from me. There ain't nothin' I can't handle." He said the last with a downward swipe of his hand. He was slipping into what Lisa had come to think of as his 'tough guy' accent. He only used it when he was trying to prove something.

"It's not important," she said at last. "Just this guy I knew a long time ago. I don't know what made me think of him now."

"We look alike?" Isaac asked.

She took a moment to size him up. Isaac wasn't what anyone would call gorgeous, but he was good looking. Clear skin, full lips, straight teeth, wide brown eyes with thick, dark lashes. His head was shaved in some current fashion that was probably an attempt to hide a retreating hairline. "I can't really remember," she answered, picturing Adam perfectly. There were no similarities at all. "He was white. Still is, I guess." She shrugged. "I think he had dark hair."

Why was she lying? She was dating this guy; she should be telling him the truth. As much as she was allowed to tell, anyway.

Isaac's eyes widened and he half stood up in his chair. "You got it on with a cracker!" He sounded repulsed at the mere idea. His lower lip began quivering in a way Lisa had never seen before, and his throat looked tight.

So much for there being nothing you can't handle, she thought. "It bothers you that much?"

"Hell, yeah. That's a sell out. African-American queens should only be gettin' it on with African-American kings."

"We didn't 'get it on'," Lisa protested. Out of the corner of her eyes she glanced around the cafe. The noise level hadn't changed again, but she felt like everyone was looking at her. One person was, a grad student type person at the next table who quickly looked away. Lisa lowered her volume. "I can't believe you're even saying what you're saying. We didn't date. We didn't kiss."

'I teleported with him,' she remembered trying to explain to her mother. That conversation had gone only slightly better than this one.

"Sit down," she continued. "You're making people stare. Adam was just a friend. I met him on a trip overseas and haven't seen him since. There's nothing more to tell you and nothing, absolutely nothing, for you to be so worked up about."

"I ain't worked up." He sat down, reluctantly.

"Bull. We've been seeing each other for over a month and this is the first time you've ever been anything but pleasant towards me. Come on. We were having a nice afternoon. As nice as possible, anyway, considering Greenberg's exam is less than two weeks away. Can you just drop it and let's study in peace?" She bent back over the notebook to lead by example, and started highlighting the dates. She'd have to remember to look them up.

Isaac stood up without a comment and walked over to the register. Lisa didn't turn around to see what he was doing over there. Mostly, she was afraid to know. She tidied up some of the loose papers that had spilled from her notebook, old homework assignments and the like. She couldn't wait for the end of semester bonfire when she could turn all this paper into fuel.

A minute later he returned. He plunked two large, paper cups on the table. "Green tea," he said. "We need a break from the caffeine." He sat down in his chair again, then scooted it over so he was sitting next to her. The legs squealed against the tile floor. No one seemed to notice. "1204, you said? That the date?"

"Yeah," she said. "I think it has something to do with Vikings. Or Romans?" She picked up one of the textbooks for the class and started paging through it. "Maybe it's the French."

Isaac slipped is arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to him. "Tell me again why we studying this. They all been dust for centuries."

She let herself lean in against him. He smelled of Old Spice deodorant; a scent she was beginning to associate just with him. "It's going to be on the test." She almost added a comment about his grammar, but decided to let it slide. It wasn't too late to rescue the evening.

"Don't he say that 'bout everything? He can't put everything on the test he say he gonna put on the test."

She tilted her head to look up at him. "Remember the midterm?"

His throat tightened again and he nodded. "1204," he said. "You find it yet?"

"Not yet," she answered. "I can see I'm going to be up very late tonight."

****

Professor Grimm hated grading undergraduate research papers. At least once every semester he came to that same conclusion. The problem, as much as he hated to degrade other educators, was that high school English teachers seemed less and less interested in teaching grammar, spelling, vocabulary and form, and more and more interested in making sure the kids graduated with high self-esteems. The sad result was undergraduates who couldn't express a thought to save their lives, yet paradoxically believed that all of their writing was brilliant, award winning even.

He set the current paper on the end table next to him. The top page was almost covered in red inked comments; comments he shouldn't have had to make to a student at the university level. Her paper was too long, for one thing. While he encouraged his students to go beyond the terms of the assignment, he still expected their work to be coherent. This one wasn't. There were topic sentences, but the arguments were mainly of the "because I said so" nature. Sadly, it was one of the better examples from this particular class.

Letting out a deep breath, he pushed back into his leather easy chair and reached for the cup of coffee on the end table to his right. It was cold. He knew that before even touching the mug; it probably wasn't even the same cup he had made before coming into the den to get the grading finished. Indeed, one glance at the congealed cream floating on the surface of the liquid confirmed that. That meant he'd left the new cup somewhere else.

He grabbed the handle on the side of the chair to lower the foot rest. It stuck in place. With the heal of his palm he pounded at it--and caused the chair to rock enough to bump the end table which sent the cold coffee mug tumbling to the floor.

"Of course," he said out loud. He watched the dark strain spread across the beige carpet and remembered a time in his life when little problems like this would have ruined his day. He'd never had much of a temper, but he'd always taken petty problems far too seriously. Now his petty problems were a welcome relief.

A pounding at the door broke into his thoughts. It took him a moment to connect the staccato with its meaning, and more awkward seconds to climb out of the chair.

The hallway was dark; a storm having come in so fast while he was grading that the sunlight had all but disappeared. Who knew how long he'd been grading in artificial twilight.

He opened the door to find one of his students, Alejandro, on the doorstep. The young man was standing as close to the door as he could without letting himself in, huddled under the overhang. Rain dripped from the eaves and fell from the sky so hard only the pock marks on the cement gave it away.

"Hello, Professor," Alejo said. His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his yellow jacket.

Alejandro - Alejo - was an import from Mexico, an international student working on his English under Grimm's tutelage. He was, Grimm reflected, one of the best students in the department, and one of Grimm's personal favorites. Unlike many international students, Alejo didn't act like studying English was beneath him. He also wrote papers that weren't too long and which did get to the point.

"Please, come inside. I can't have you standing outside in this weather. You might get too sick to go to class tomorrow." Professor Grimm ushered his student into his house, a strong breeze whipped up by a nascent snow storm all but forcing the young man to accept the invitation.

No sooner was Alejo inside than the wind pulled the door shut with a loud bang that caused both men to jump.

"I have sorry bothering you in home," Alejo said, squinting into the darkened room.

"No, no. That's no problem. My students are always welcome to visit." Grimm stepped over to the nearby wall and flipped the light switch. One of the two bulbs in the overhead fixture came on without incident, the other burnt out with an electric pop and a flash of light. Grimm sighed. "That's about how my day has been going." He looked at his student. Alejo's broad cheeks were scattered with patches of dark red, like a bad allergic reaction. Involuntary tears from the cold gathered in the corners of his eyes. "Can I entice you with a hot drink? You look like you're freezing."

"Yes. The temperature is much cold." Alejo unzipped his jacket, reached inside and pulled out a small package wrapped in a plastic grocery bag. "Professor, here iss the book that you borrowed to me." He unwrapped a small black text and handed it to the professor.

"Lent," Grimm corrected automatically. "It's 'borrow from' and 'loan to'."

"Lent," Alejo repeated.

"Or 'loaned'," the professor said, stressing the final 'd'. "'Loan' typically refers to money, while 'lend' is what I did with this book." He rubbed the bridge of his nose in thought. "The two words used to be quite separate in meaning, but appear to be converging into one word now with several forms. I'm sure some would argue that the convergence is near completion, and that 'lent' is the current past tense of 'loan'." He looked up, suddenly aware of his rambling. His gaze caught Alejo's, and Grimm felt his face warm. "Never mind. That's a different topic for a different day . . . and class."

Alejo nodded. English language history had never been part of his studies. Both of them knew that even if Alejo had understood, he still wouldn't be able to comment. "How iss your daughter?" he asked instead. Though they had never met, Sara's health was a topic of constant concern amongst his students.

Grimm hefted the book, idly flipping through the pages. "She's not getting better." He grimaced. That was all he could say with any certainty. None of the assorted professionals who had seen Sara could give a definitive diagnosis about what was wrong with her; none of them could offer any hope for her future.

A piece of folded paper stuck between the last page and the back cover of the book slipped out and fluttered to the floor. Grimm bent down and retrieved it. It was a photocopy of the front page of a newspaper: "The Virginia Post". "Local Girl Vanishes," the headline announced. Little else of note had happened that day; the headline took up the center front page. Below the headline was a reprint of the picture of a young, black girl, mid-teens, flanking the column of text that made up the story. The girl looked uncomfortable in what was obviously a school photo. The picture's ink was smudged, as if someone had touched the original too often.

"What's this?" he asked, turning the paper around so Alejo could see it.

"I don't know. I not see previous." Alejo's eyes flicked over the text. "Maybe is Eric's paper. He was read book too. He was read all books. Was spend many times in the bibliotecha. Was no sleep . . . sleep . . . sleeping?" He looked up at Grimm for confirmation.

Grimm acknowledged the correct form with a nod, then refolded the page and stuck it in his back pocket. "He wasn't sleeping? Insomnia?"

Alejo shrugged. "Not say. He say have bad dreams."

Grimm turned and walked down the hallway to the kitchen, motioning behind him for Alejo to follow. As he passed them, he flipped on every light switch along the way. "Have you heard from him?" He set the book down on the kitchen counter.

"No. He no answer the door. I knock many times, all the days."

Grimm frowned. "That's worrisome. Usually when a student misses that many classes, he calls or emails or something. Or someone calls on his behalf. I haven't even received a drop notice. Tea, coffee or hot chocolate?"

"Hot chocolate," Alejo answered.

"Good choice. Take a seat. You can hang your jacket on the chair." He watched as Alejo complied, choosing the seat at the kitchen table closest to the stove, then he started gathering the chocolate making ingredients.

He was putting the water on to boil when movement out of the corner of his eye caught Grimm's attention. He turned to see his daughter standing framed in the doorway. She was dressed in worn, but clean, grey sweats, her shoulders hunched as through trying to draw into herself. Her gaze fluttered around the kitchen, not seeming to see anything, or even to recognize where she was.

The kitchen chair scraped, then Alejo was standing at Grimm's side. Grimm was suddenly conscious of how tall the younger man was, towering a good six inches above him.

"Mi chica suena," Alejo breathed, slipping into his native Spanish.

Chapter 2

"Your dream girl?" Grimm translated. He wanted to face his student--years of lecturing had left him uneasy talking to someone he wasn't looking at--but he didn't dare take his eyes off Sara. Her behavior around other people had become unpredictable, sometimes even dangerous. He positioned himself between Alejo and Sara, ready to catch her if she tried to attack this student as she had done to another just a week ago.

"This last night, I dream of her," Alejo said.

"You dreamed about her?" Grimm was too stunned to be angry. While he well knew the kind of dreams teenage boys usually had about teenage girls, the notion that Alejo had dreamed of someone he had never met with enough detail to recognize her piqued his curiosity.

"Si. In my dream, her hair iss long."

Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Alejo miming a hair length just reaching his elbow. Sara's hair had been that long once . . . when she had been well. Now it was shorn close to her head to prevent her from ripping it out during her all too frequent panic attacks.

"She talk to me," Alejo continued. He hesitated, then shook his head. "No remember what she say."

"Are you sure it was Sara?"

"Si. Yes. I no have doubt." Indeed, he did sound very sure. "Look. She know me also."

At some point, Sara's unfocused, wandering gaze had settled on Alejo. There was no expression on her face, no indication of any emotion or desire in her stance, yet she was clearly looking at--and seeing--the young man.

"I should take her upstairs," Grimm said. "She doesn't do too well with people anymore. Especially strangers." He paused, not sure how much information was too much. Most of the school knew that something had happened to his daughter--his daughters--over the summer. Both the town paper and the university paper had covered it extensively for over a week, then dropped coverage when no new information was forthcoming. The interesting information wasn't believable, and the believable information wasn't interesting, especially when it failed to develop or resolve in short order. "I'm afraid we don't know what's wrong with her," he supplied, answering the question he knew Alejo would be too polite to ask. "Some of the doctors think it's a nervous breakdown of some variety."

Alejo didn't respond. He was locked in some silent communication with Sara, neither moving.

Then it broke. Whatever had been happening between them ceased; perhaps a decision had been made. With mincing footsteps, Sara began walking around the edge of the room. She moved towards Alejo but stayed next to the wall instead of cutting straight across. Frowning, Grimm headed over to intercept his daughter.

He took hold of her hand to lead her from the room. With an uncanny strength, she jerked her hand from his grasp and pressed her back to the wall as if to get as far away from him as possible. She tried to continue towards her goal, but found her way blocked by a wooden cabinet on one side and her father on the other.

Sara sank to the floor then and, meshing herself to the cabinet, began to rock. Her fists were bunched up next to her ears, arms pressed against her face.

"I'm sorry you had to see this," Grimm said without turning around. He didn't want Alejo to see the pain he knew was on his face. "You should leave. I'll have to give you a rain check on the hot chocolate." Behind him, he could hear Alejo gathering up his coat, the chair scraping back into position under the table. He waited until his student left the room, then sat down on the tile across from his daughter and prepared to wait with her until she was ready to move. "Someday," he promised, "we're going to laugh about this."

They sat together, separated, the young professor in his suit and tie, and the teenager wearing the female version of his face and too-large sweats.

"I can hear the ocean," she replied, speaking to the floor.

"I know, honey," he answered sadly, because that was all she knew how to say anymore.

****

Famous last words, Lisa thought, as she closed the door to her dorm room. It was just after 1:30 in the morning. The coffee shop had closed and the library wouldn't become 24 hour until next week.

She slung her backpack into the corner and rolled back her head, trying to loosen some of the tenseness in her neck and back. Tanya still wasn't back, she noted, her eyes falling on the empty top bunk. That wasn't much of a surprise. She might wander in eventually, or it might be days before she returned. Like the time she ducked out for a bag of Doritos. Six days later, she returned, with no clear explanation of where she'd been. And without the chips.

The answering machine was flashing. Lisa crossed over to the heavy wooden desk on which it sat and pushed the playback button. There were five messages.

"Lisa, honey," the first one said, in the careful tones of someone doing her best to stay calm. "I know you're probably in class. Call me when you get back."

She cringed; it was her mom. The only person who couldn't take "we're not in; we'll return your call when we are" as an acceptable reason for someone not to answer the phone. She had forgotten to call her mom.

"Dear, I had to step out for a minute. Hopefully, I didn't miss your call. It's dinner time and I was hoping to talk to you. It's so hard to sit here and eat at this big table without you. Please call back."

She glanced at her watch. It was far too late to call her mom now. It was possible that her mom was still up, still pacing around like she always did. Lisa could practically smell the brownies baking. On the chance that she wasn't however . . . and, Lisa'd been warned about making early morning phone calls unless there was a hospital involved. With a beep, the machine started playing the next message.

"Lisa, where are you? It's been dark for hours. It gets dark so early this time of year and I just worry about you so much, having to walk across that great big campus by yourself in the dark. You just never know what can happen to a pretty girl like you."

Beep.

The next message started, and there was nothing calm about her mom's voice anymore, fake or otherwise. "Young lady, I don't care if you're laying dead in a ditch. You'd better pick up that phone-"

Lisa slammed her hand on the delete button. "You have no new messages," the machine informed her, in its polite, assembled speech.

"Thank you," Lisa breathed.

How many times did they have to go through this? They'd been through finals twice before. The first time, Lisa sat her mother down and explained what was going on. The problem with a mother who never went to college herself was that she couldn't, or refused, to understand the nature of the beast.

"It means I'm going to be out a lot," Lisa remembered trying to explain. "I'll be at the library."

Arms akimbo, her mother answered, "And there are no phones at the library?"

"Of course there are phones. In the lobby. I won't be in the lobby. I'll be where the books are. If I have to go down to the lobby to call you all the time, I'll never get any studying done. I'm eighteen years old," she said. "You should trust me to take care of myself."

A look of hurt crossed her mother's face. With a rush of words, Mrs. Davis covered it up. "I trust you. You know that. It's the people out there," she said, with a sweep of her arm, "who are trying to take my little girl away from me. I don't trust them. You need to be careful."

The conversation didn't end there. It never did.

As much as she loved her, Lisa decided that her mother was just going to have to wait until tomorrow for that phone call. She grabbed her Anatomy text book from the bookshelf and settled down at her desk to look over the diagram of muscles before going to bed.

****

That night Lisa dreamed. One minute she'd been staring at the Anatomy text; the next she was standing in a child's bedroom, one she'd never seen before. The walls were painted a soft yellow with a bright floral runner framing the ceiling. Two beds occupied most of the room, each covered in a thick white duvet with lace trim, barely visible through a mound of lacy pillows and stuffed animals. The room felt bright and cheerful and unimportant.

Feeling too awake to be asleep, she was reminded of another dream once: Of the first time she teleported, and the first time she met another teleporter. The beaches of Tapahini bore no resemblance to this space. Not physically. But there was an overwhelming sense of deja vu. She'd been here before, wherever 'here' was.

"Hello?" she called, her voice sounding distant. "Is anyone here?"

She strained her ears, and heard nothing. If this was a dream, it was unlike any she could remember. Digging her nails into her other forearm, she held it until the grasping hand started to tremble. Nothing else changed.

"Okay . . . ." she said, as she started looking for anything that would answer any of the six basic questions.

Her eyes found the door, a simple wooden affair. She reached out to grasp the doorknob.

"That's not the way," someone said. "Not the way at all."

Lisa turned a circle, but found no speaker. The room was just as empty and still as when she first arrived, even the lacy drapes in the windows didn't move. The sound seemed to begin and end in her head. But this wasn't telepathy. Telepathy didn't use words, not as such. For the Tomorrow People to say that one talked telepathically or heard someone's telepathic voice was an inadequate description at best, but it was the only way they knew. This sounded like someone talking directly into her head, like listening to herself think. She realized that was also how her own calls had sounded.

"Come out!" Lisa demanded. "I'm tired of this game."

"This isn't a game," the voice returned. The air to the left of the door shimmered, thickened into a teenaged girl with long tea brown hair and china blue eyes. The girl looked pained to see Lisa, her eyebrows drawn and face twisted as if she were hurting. "How did you get here?"

"You're asking *me*?" Lisa responded.

The girl disappeared back into the air, then coalesced on the right side of the door. "You can hear me?" she asked, crossing her arms protectively in front of her.

"Should I not be able to?"

The girl tilted her head to the side before saying, "No one's ever answered before."

Big surprise, Lisa thought. The girl didn't seem to understand when a joke had gone on too long. "What are *you* doing here?" she asked. With any luck, she'd get a straight answer and then they could all go home and get on with their lives.

"Waiting."

Lisa sighed. No luck. "Waiting for what?"

The girl faded out, then back in. She didn't change positions, but she gave an impression of movement, as if she were shaking.

When no answer was forthcoming, Lisa gestured to the door. "Why don't you leave?" She reached for the knob again, and was stopped by something that felt like a slap on the wrist, though the girl still hadn't moved and she could sense no one else present.

"No!" came the panicked response. "You can't go there, Lisa Davis. Don't go there!"

Lisa blinked. The next question caught in her throat as she realized what the girl had said: The girl had known her name. Had this been a normal dream, that wouldn't have been interesting at all. But this had never been a normal dream, if it was a dream at all. Lisa didn't have to search to find the girl's name in return: Sara Grimm. She only knew of one context where names where exchanged without introduction. Tomorrow People always recognized one another. Maybe it was an offshoot of their telepathic abilities, or maybe it was something else.

Then, before Lisa could figure out how to respond to the last statement, the dream was gone and she was laying awake in her bed.

Chapter 3

It seemed like only a few minutes later that Lisa was awakened again. The sun was coming in her window full force, like it was aiming for her, and something was making a dreadful racket. She slapped blearily at her alarm clock. The noise stopped, then started again; it was the phone. Stumbling out of bed, she grabbed at the phone and mumbled a sleepy "'lo" into the receiver.

"Are you trying to scare me to death, Young Lady. You like near sent me to an early grave."

"Morning, Mom," Lisa answered, trying to force some of the sleepiness from her voice.

"Where were you last night?" her mother responded. "I called and I called. Where was your decency to call me back? I raised you better than that."

Lisa took a deep breath. "I was out studying, Mom. I told you I'd probably be out late. The semester's almost over, remember?"

"Twenty-six hours, Lisa Christine--"

"Mom--"

"--I spent twenty-six hours in labor with you,--"

"Mom--"

"--and you can't even see fit to pick up the telephone and let me know that you're all right!" There was banging in the background, like pots and pans being stacked together.

"Mother! I'm going to be home soon for a whole month. You have to stop worrying about me so much. I can take care of myself." Lisa glanced at the clock, then had to look again to register the time. She'd slept through her first class and was ten minutes from being late to her second. If she hurried she could grab a shower, but breakfast was out of the question.

"--so many dangers out there," her mother was saying. "Not a day goes by that there isn't another sad story in the news. You are locking your door at night? You know you're supposed to do that. Just remember what happened in that sorority house at Florida State University. The only girl who survived was the one whose door was locked." Her mother paused for a breath and Lisa jumped in.

"Mom, I'll call you back later, okay? I have to get going; I overslept."

"Don't stay up so late tonight," her mother warned. "If you don't get your beauty sleep, you're going to make youself sick."

"I will," she promised. "Don't worry." She hung up the phone without waiting for a goodbye. If she dared stay on the phone until one was spoken, she'd miss her second class too.

Ten minutes later, showered, she was running out of the door for her second class of the day. There was no way she'd be on time, but at least she'd be there. Not until she was sitting in class did she recall the dream; the reason she had overslept.

Lisa had spent the better part of three years not being a Tomorrow Person. The intensity and attention that some people dedicated to their jobs, families -- to the important things in life -- she'd dedicated to this task. By no means had it been an easy one. The other Tomorrow People were the kind of friends most people could only wish for -- it wasn't often that one found friends who were willing to sacrifice their lives for your own -- and she wanted to disown them. On those occasions when her reserve faltered and she started to forget her reasons, all she had to do was look at her driver's license. At the picture that belonged to her and the tiny black type that spelled out a name that didn't.

It was probably over-reacting. Her mother was known to do that, and it was her decision to take up General Damon's offer. But it had been necessary at the time. Not so much as to prevent others from coming after them. If anyone had wanted to find them, Lisa was sure a new name wouldn't have been much of a hindrance. No, the change was so they could allow themselves to feel safe.

The Davis' became the Youngs; they moved to a new state, and tried desperately to recreate what they'd had before the talent show. At times it was rather like acting out parts in a private play. And when her mother woke up with nightmares, as she sometimes did, or when Lisa came home to the smell of baking brownies, she only had to invoke the Name to make her mom feel comfortable again.

"They're not looking for the Youngs, Mother," she would say.

And her mother, who was lying shaking in bed or standing at the kitchen counter up to her elbows in flour and cocoa, would digest that information and smile and say, "Of course not. Just be careful."

'Be careful' which meant 'and don't do anything to change that'.

She had promised herself she wouldn't. And she was good about keeping it, mostly. It got harder after she moved out, during her first lonely weeks at college. It was worse even than when they'd changed their name and left a whole life behind. The option was there for her to go home, but it was one she couldn't exercise. She didn't have a car, and she wasn't about to teleport. She'd had terrible homesickness that semester, had even found herself missing brownies. She and her roommate hadn't had much to say to one another. It was easy to go for days without saying a word to anyone. In those times she found herself wondering how Adam, Megabyte and Kevin were doing. Wondering if they'd ever figured out where the ship came from and who it belonged to; if there were any other Tomorrow People.

She'd wondered, but she hadn't acted.

So, it really figured.

Because Adam was waiting in her room when she returned from class.

Lisa stopped short in the doorway, hand still on the knob. Adam had changed.

He was older, of course, which was somehow a surprise in itself. She'd only known him for a few very intense days, but it didn't seem quite right that the person sitting cross-legged on her floor, thumbing through one of her text books, should look different than the face burned into her memory. He'd cut his hair, and his chin looked weaker than she remembered. But he still seemed jittery, a feeling of too much energy for one human being. He had the same quality about him as a soldier, always on guard, especially when appearing the most defenseless.

"Your roommate let me in," he explained, by way of greeting, then added, "She seems nice."

Lisa frowned, still trying to figure out what was happening. Adam being in her room was something she hadn't experienced since, well, ever. She hadn't seen him outside the spaceship since she became Lisa Young. Out of that context, he was all but a stranger. "Um, hi," she said warily. "I hope you didn't do anything that I have to explain," she added, depositing her backpack and jacket on the floor. Did anyone else have to worry about people appearing out of thin air, she wondered briefly, before it occurred to her that that was the least of her problems. Later, her roommate would want to know all the details -- the normal ones anyway -- who the dark-haired Australian was, how Lisa knew him, how come she'd never mentioned him before. From there it was bound to get worse.

"Not this time," Adam responded. He met her eyes, a barely concealed grin playing around his lips.

Lisa hesitated for a moment longer before allowing herself to smile back. She forgot that underneath all the worry and responsibility, Adam had a humorous side. His jokes were always the most successful since they were the least expected. It was the side of him she knew least well, but probably better than anyone else. At least, there had been a time once when she could say that.

"Yeah, well I'd like to keep it that way." She forced the wariness from her voice before saying the last. He knew full well how she felt; there was no reason to be rude about it. And to think that once she'd questioned what interest the CIA could have in them.

Lisa shut the door and leaned back against it, the immediate small talk used up. Adam was in her room for a reason; she wasn't eager to find out what it was. Since the day she'd said goodbye, he hadn't once violated that request by coming to her. That he was here was just more proof she didn't want that another phase of her life was coming to an end.

"We haven't seen you in a long time," he finally said. He gave a last rifle of the text book's pages, then set it on the carpet and rose in a fluid motion to his feet. The room was small and filled with dual sets of heavy wooden furniture. Lisa shifted on her feet. The short distance between she and Adam was already getting uncomfortable.

She was already against the door, or she would have taken another step back. Instead, she stepped around him, began to straighten up the small amount of clutter that had accumulated during the week. She reached for a pile of notebooks on her desk, stacked haphazardly together, and was stilled when Adam touched her arm.

"Are you okay, Lisa? Your mom?" She could hear the concern in his voice, see it echoed in his every gesture. Adam needed to take care of others. She didn't have to be a mind reader to know that he wondered if he'd succeeded, if he'd made the right decision all those years ago.

Lisa looked down at the notebooks her hand rested on. They had suffered for the semester, the corners worn and bent, fourteen weeks of ink doodles masking the original bright colors. "Mom's good. She worries. She mails me tins of brownies every couple of weeks."

"I thought she might," he said. "Mothers always have a hard time letting their children go."

"Especially mine," she murmured.

Adam grinned as he nodded in empathy, then his tone turned more questioning, as if he wasn't sure what topics were safe and which would scare her off again. "Do you like it here? University?"

"Yeah," she said, brightening. "I do. My biggest excitement is finals, but that's kind of the point. I mean, don't *you* ever wish it could go back to how it was before?"

There was a slight pause in which he glanced down at his feet, then he said, "It can't."

"It can too," she replied, sounding childish even to her own ears. "My life was good. There was no one trying to kill me, or experiment on me. Did you know that in my first sixteen years, I was never once kidnaped? Taken hostage for any reason? And I didn't know anyone else who was either."

"And now?"

"Now is even better," she said. "I have everything I always wanted. I have college, and friends, and I know where my mom is, and I know she's safe." She gave a short laugh. "I have a boyfriend. An actual boyfriend."

"You're lonely," he said.

"I don't have to wake up every morning wondering who's going to try to kill me today," she retorted.

Another short pause, while Adam glanced out the window at the deceptively bright day. It looked sunny and warm, but was in fact bitter cold with a harsh breeze that had burned Lisa's face as she walked home from class. "But you do," he finally said.

"I was doing fine," she said, intending her words to sound cold, and ending up with mournful. "Why are you here?"

Another quick look out the window, then he turned to her all with all seriousness. Adam-the-leader stood before her. He raked a hand through his short hair. "Lisa, the ship . . . it wants something. Something from one of us."

Us.

Sometimes she hated that word. It never seemed to include her in anything she wanted to be part of.

She didn't answer. She did not want to talk about this. She straightened the notebooks again, then turned to the bed and pulled up the crumpled sheets on the bottom bunk, doing what she could to make the bed without crawling onto it. That task done, she turned back to Adam who was still there, staring at her patiently. He hadn't even changed positions.

"I hoped you might know what," he said. "I've already talked to the others, and they're just as blank as I am."

This was her chance, she realized. She should tell him about the dream, about meeting Sara. She had found another Tomorrow Person, after all. Another in a strain of humanity so new all the members could still be numbered on two hands. However, new Tomorrow People usually appeared off the island's shore, their first teleport ending in a salt water bath. They did not appear in dreams. Maybe he could tell her what it meant.

She had to laugh at that thought, or she would have if she had been alone and certain that no one could hear her. After all this time, and all the distance, she was thinking-- seriously thinking-- about letting them back in. Because she wasn't stupid enough to think it would stop at Adam. Letting him back meant letting all of them back. It meant going back to a time in her life she had no desire to remember, much less re-experience.

'Be careful' her mom said.

Lisa was pretty sure this didn't qualify as careful.

He'd barely been here ten minutes and she was already weakening. Her instincts told her to turn to him, to trust him, because he would know the answers. Adam had broken out into being a Tomorrow Person first, lived with his powers the longest, and experienced the most. But she wasn't far behind. She'd acquired her powers only weeks after him, and she was only a couple years younger. She should be able to take care of any problems on her own; what Adam knew, she should know.

And still that part of her kept trying to tell her what she should do, without considering what it would cost. She should let them in, it said. There was a reason. She should trust Adam, it said. There was a good reason. She should tell him because he might know what to do next.

"Lisa," he prompted.

But she knew what came next. If she said anything, he'd convince her to return to the island with him. Then they'd be up to their ears in the kind of adventure that some people spend their lives seeking, and Lisa had spent hers avoiding.

She averted her eyes to the worn school books again. There, scribbled in green ink was her name. The one that wasn't hers. She wondered if Adam would understand that too, if he would understand how much he was asking her to give up. Again.

"Adam," she began, and stopped. How could she express herself? How could she make him understand, when she wasn't even sure she understood? She glanced out the window at the students passing by, the lucky, lucky students who didn't even realize how lucky they were. None of them, she was sure, would ever have to worry about this kind of conversation. They, at least, had problems of the predictable kind. Their problems had solutions, well known and practiced, because someone else had had the same kind of problem, and someone before that, and someone before that.

A chime broke into her thoughts; the clock tower announcing the hour.

"Adam," she tried again. "I--" The tower quieted, the slack filled now with the increased volume of chatter as students poured from the surrounding buildings. "Did that just ring four times?"

"I think so," he said. "I wasn't counting."

Her shoulders suddenly relaxed, her breath escaping in a quick gasp. "I have class. I have to go to class. Now." She didn't even try to hide her relief. Saved by the bell.

"Lisa, this is important."

"I know. We'll talk about it later, okay?" Her eyebrows went up, countenance expressing a silent plea. "I promise," she added. "I can't miss class; my mother would kill me if she found out." She grabbed the backpack and winter coat that still sat by the door and rushed out, leaving Adam behind.

In the hallway, a mural of snowmen and ice skaters was being created along the cinder block walls and wooden doors in preparation for a holiday season that would leave the building closed and empty with no one around to look at or enjoy the effort being put into the decorating. Pairs of girls were scattered up and down the hallway involved in the construction paper and glitter project. Lisa nodded at one of the pairs, two girls she recognized from a class but couldn't place names to, and headed towards the exit at the opposite end of the long hall.

"Lisa, wait!" Adam padded up behind her.

"No," she said. "I'm going to be late." She struggled into her jacket as she went, juggling her backpack from one arm to the other as she tried to get everything on in the correct order before hitting the outside and whatever whims of the weather awaited.

"Yeah! You go, Lisa!" the two girls yelled, drawing the attention of the scattered others who had been at work. Two other girls cheered loudly. The floor as a whole never acted much as if they liked boys or anything to do with them. Yet this was the same floor that, when a fire alarm had gone off at 3:00 in the morning on their second day of school, had more boys exit the rooms than girls. That was only the first time that Lisa had huddled out on the lawn in her pajamas, hugging herself in a fit of shyness, and wishing that whomever had failed to do his or her job in keeping the all-girls residence hall all-girls would be dismissed on the spot.

"Wait, please," Adam begged. He grabbed her left sleeve as she was trying to slide her arm through it and pulled it back off. She wrenched it out of his hands and turned to face him, the jacket still dangling half on.

"Class, Adam," she stated, nodding her head to show that he was also supposed to nod his head and agree with what she said. "That's the part where I leave this building and go to another one to sit in a crowded room and get lectured at about something that has no relevance to my life whatsoever, except that it's required, and as they say: to do the stuff you want to do, sometimes you have to do the stuff you don't want to it. Only, I'm pretty sure that "stuff" isn't the word that usually gets used, and I want to go to medical school. Okay?" She turned to continue towards the door, and ran right into her roommate.

The older woman, a junior to Lisa's sophomore, posed in the hall like a model at the end of the runway. She wore skin tight black jeans and a black roll necked sweater. Static electricity fluffed her dark brown hair in a halo around her head, yet she somehow managed to look as if that was exactly what she had intended her hair to do.

"Omigod, *you* have been keeping secrets from me!" Tanya announced, letting her gaze brush the length of Adam's body in a way that was neither decorous nor polite. "Here I think there's not much to you, then *he* shows up at the door," she continued, the near shouting level of her voice drawing everyone's attention to the scene.

Adam muttered something behind her, and for once Lisa felt like they were on the same side. Her immediate instinct was to shush her roommate and deny any wrong doing. Instead, she narrowed her eyes, putting as much steel into the expression as she knew how. It was hopeless to try to silence Tanya, but it was damning to respond to her. The girl treated conversation like catching a fish: casting out topics until one was seized, then reeling it in and drowning it in air until it died.

"How could you keep something that . . . gorgeous . . . hidden? Unless you were trying to keep him for yourself. You weren't trying to keep him for yourself?" Tanya continued, volume unmoderated. She talked at Lisa as if Adam weren't standing right there. "Is he seeing anyone? Are you two a thing? Is he gay? He's not gay, is he? Please tell me he's straight and available."

"Adam," Lisa whispered over her shoulder, "Escape. Now."

He nodded once and took a step back towards the dorm room. He would duck in there, Lisa figured, and teleport back to the island, and Tanya would be left forever wondering how he got away. It was almost justice.

"Do you like coffee?" Tanya turning on Adam, who looked like he was ready to teleport away regardless of the audience. "I know this *great* coffee place. It's over on Third street. Do you go to school here? You know where Third street is, right?" She waved a pointed finger in an array of different directions that did nothing to clarify which direction Third street might be in. "On the corner of Forrest and Third. Oh, I can't remember what the place is called. Lisa, what's that place called on Forrest and Third. Or is it Graham and Third? It might be Graham and Third."

"It's Fourth street," Lisa found herself answering, almost against her will. "And it closed last semester."

Tanya looked momentarily disappointed, then sized up Adam again "But you still like coffee? You look like the kind of guy who just *loves* coffee. French Silk Mocha. You don't look like a cappuccino kind of guy."

"Coffee?" Adam stuttered.

"I knew it," Tanya announced, triumphantly. "Definitely mochas. French Silk Mochas. They're so rich, and those chocolate shavings on top, mmmm."

"I-I don't--." He looked helplessly at Lisa.

Fine. Lisa stepped forward. "Tanya, Adam's just visiting and right now he has to go away. Far away. He doesn't drink coffee, he doesn't go to school here, and he's not interested in you." While she talked, Adam was backing towards the dorm room. She waited until Adam had gotten close enough to the room to be out of firing range before finishing, in the sweetest voice she could muster, "Fair enough?"

Tanya paused for just a second, a long second in which she seemed to be processing Lisa's words. One of her hands crept up and tugged at the longer of the three earrings dangling from her right ear. "You mean you *are* dating?" she asked, yanking on the earring again and not seeming at all surprised. "Are you lovers?"

Without answering, Lisa finished shrugging her jacket on, zipped up the front, then settled the backpack in place, its weight reassuring on her shoulders. "I'm going this way," she told Tanya, pointing towards the exterior doors at the end of the hall. She pushed past Tanya, knowing the girl wouldn't step aside without prompting, and walked towards her destination, and her freedom. Getting outside, continuing her schedule as it had been every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the last semester, would be normal. It would be what she came here to achieve. She hoped, somehow, Adam would also escape back to relative safety on the other side of the world, where he would stay, never, never to return.

"It's not fair!" Tanya lamented behind her. "Your life is just so cool. You are so lucky."

Chapter 4

The room was all but gone this time, faded to a pressing, infinite grayness. Only the door remained substantial.

"It figures," Lisa sighed. But it wasn't a surprise, not really. Wishful thinking had been all that let her convince herself that the first dream was a one-off. "So," she added, throwing her arms open wide, "How do you want to play this? I'm not going to stand here and whimper, so you can just forget that idea. I set my alarm, though. I wasn't about to hang out here all night."

There was no response, no hint at all that anything or anyone heard her. The air in this space wasn't any more real than the light that seemed to fill the space; the curtains couldn't twitch nor the light flicker in any way that could even be interpreted as meaningful. There was no way to tell if someone else was present.

"You're going to make this difficult, aren't you?" she called.

If Sara was listening, she didn't answer. Lisa remained alone in the room that was a shadow of what it had been.

"Come out, come out wherever you are," she sing-songed. Her voice rang in the stillness. "Midnight, starbright," she continued under her breath. "I wish I see a ghost tonight." Memories sprang to mind of many a childhood evening playing the combination hide-and-seek and tag game. The gray dreamscape lent itself to imagining a foggy night, although it lacked the flashes of lightening bugs or the playful screams of her peers seeking to navigate in the dark. "And if I do, I'll take my shoe and knock it black and blue.

"Ghost in the graveyard!" she sang out: the name of the game, but also the warning to the designated "ghost" that their time to hide was up.

As if on cue, Sara appeared. She, too, seemed faded around the edges. A kind of weariness that seeped through every movement, and couldn't be pin-pointed to any one description. "You came back," she said. The girl leaned in to peer at her face. Lisa saw her reflection in the other girl's eyes, and had no doubt that the reverse was true.

"Yeah, want to tell me why?"

Instead of answering, Sara flashed out of existence.

"Great!" Hands on her hips, Lisa glared out at the emptiness. She waited for several minutes for Sara to return, until she started to imagine that the grayness was closing in around her. Then she started to pace, to count off steps. To try to force dimension in its absence.

Eventually she realized that no matter how far she seemed to walk, no ground was covered. Nor was she tiring out. It was no more than she expected for a dream, but she'd already had ample proof that this wasn't just another dream. Through it all, the door didn't move.

She stopped in mid-step, caught with that thought. The door hadn't changed position relative to her. No matter how much she paced, how far she seemed to walk, the door was still in the same relative location. Even her attempts to circle it were met without result.

"Great," she repeated, but without the fight. "So what am I supposed to do *now*?" The last was directed up, in the general direction of a God that Lisa wasn't sure she believed in.

She felt her attention redirected to the portal; the same invisible force that had stopped her from opening the door before now moved her head so she had a clear view of it. While Lisa watched, the air in front of it thickened, then became a person. A Hispanic teen, with the broad, high-cheek boned face of someone who no doubt had ancestors among the indigenous population.

He was turning in place, clearly trying to reason what he was seeing. He just as clearly didn't see Lisa. His gaze skipped over her, just another spirit.

"How come he can't see me?" she breathed, more to herself than anyone else. She didn't expect an answer, but the silence of this place begged to be filled.

Lisa watched with morbid fascination as the new arrival explored the scene. She couldn't help but wonder if he saw the same emptiness as she, or if his mind was filling in the blanks somehow. Maybe he saw the bedroom that she'd seen on her first visit. Was it just the previous night?

Did he understand that this was more than just a dream, she wondered. In a bed back at the school that had once felt so safe and normal her body lay in sleep, but her mind was quite conscious of the here and now--such that they were. Although her body was asleep, she was quite awake. Yet, there was a certain stiffness about the teen's movements that suggested that he wasn't quite aware.

"Sometimes they talk," Sara said, once again standing next to the elder girl as if she'd never left her side. "They beg, or yell or pray to God. Some cry. I don't like the ones who cry. Mostly they just look around, and then . . ."

The boy reached for the door. His hand never found the knob. Instead, he stepped straight though what had appeared to be solid wood. He didn't come out the other side.

". . . they go away."

The act itself seemed so innocent, so painless. The teenager had been there, and then he walked through the door. And Lisa knew with utmost certainty that this was not a good thing. Sara sounded sad, and perhaps a little lonely as she related the facts. Lisa was just horrified. She rubbed at the goose bumps on her arms. "Ghost in the graveyard," she repeated without humor.

She looked up to see Sara standing at her side. And another thought occurred to her. "Why me?" she asked. Why was she standing here watching when another person had been allowed to pass? she meant. Why was she allowed to see the boy, when he hadn't been able to see her? If Sara was to be believed, what she'd just seen had happened before, and would happen again.

"You answered me," was the murmured response. "No one's ever answered me before."

"Yeah, you said that already."

"They go away. She went away, and she didn't answer me."

Her hands stilled. The topic had somehow jumped beyond the creepy scene that had just played out, and Lisa wasn't sure when it happened.

"Lisa Davis," Sara added, her voice child-like and almost too low to be heard. "Make it stop. She went away and I . . . ahhh . . . ." The sound turned into a moan, then escalated into a scream of anguish. Sara pressed her arms against her ears, fingers locked behind her head. Dropping to her knees, she curled in on herself. Her hair cascaded over her hands and face, hiding her from view, offering yet another layer of protection.

"Sara?" Lisa laid a gentle hand on the girl's head.

Sara froze in place, the scream cut off abruptly. For precious seconds the two stood immobile. Then Sara pulled back, crawling on her knees. "No. Nonononono." The desperation of the word tore into Lisa, the sound of an animal under attack. The sound of a person without knowledge of pain, one naive of her right or ability to fight back, being tortured.

Curling her fingers into a fist, Lisa grimaced and took her own step back. Whatever it was, Lisa was pretty sure she hadn't started it. But she was sure that she had made it worse.

"There. Will be. No. Touching," Sara choked out. "Not. At all." Then she flickered out of existence again.

Lisa couldn't move for a long time after that. Her limbs shook from the rush of adrenaline that had no outlet in either fight or flight; her heart pounded in her chest, the beat equipresent in her jaw, and deafening in her head.

[Lisa?]

She came awake. Not suddenly, not like waking up from a nightmare. But there was no transition. One moment she was sleeping; the next she was awake in her dorm bunk-bed. Her sheets had all been kicked down to the foot, and her pillow was squashed in the corner where the bed met the wall. From above, the soft snores of her roommate filtered down. It all felt so normal, until the dream surfaced in her memory. Then she felt her pulse quicken, and the darkness of the room turn a little less friendly. The bed springs creaked as Tanya rolled over, and Lisa realized there was no one here she could talk to about the dream. No one who would see it as she did.

[Lisa?] she heard again.

She felt the softest touch at the fringes of her mind, and reached out in return.

****

"It wasn't just a dream," Lisa said. "Adam, it felt so *real*."

Lying awake in her bed, she'd felt Adam reaching for her. After their less than amicable discussion they day before, she hesitated about accepting the offered help. She had told him to go away, after all. She hesitated, but only for a second. Once, the two of them had been the only representatives of their race. Then, Adam had needed her and the two had formed a friendship of default that promised to become much more. But Lisa's fears interrupted the developing relationship, stalled it when she walked away. She had told herself then that she didn't need them then, and she had mouthed the same words again one day previous.

Maybe she didn't need Adam's help, but someone else did. Someone who, if it was possible, was more frightened than she. And that someone didn't seem to be in any hurry to go away until she got that help.

Now Adam regarded her in that soul-searching manner of his, as though looking for the truth behind her words. Not that he expected her to lie -- not that any of them could lie to him -- but he looked as if to see the things she wasn't ready to admit. Perhaps, hadn't even yet recognized herself. "It wasn't just a dream," he confirmed. "I . . . lost track of you." He bowed his head to the floor.

In the dim light of the spaceship, his expression was impossible to read. Almost without conscious control she felt the clenched control of her mind ease. The power she had first struggled against, then ignored, was waking up. Although she never wanted to admit it, the Tomorrow People's abilities could be convenient at times.

Her hard-fought-for control relaxed, and for the second time in less than a day she reached out with her thoughts to find Adam's. She found nothing. His control was better than she could have wished for herself; his thoughts were untouchable.

That wasn't fair. What did she have this power for if she couldn't use it for anything good? "What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded, instead, using the recourse she was best familiar with.

Adam raised his head. "I can feel you," he admitted, tapping his temple, "here."

She stared at him in silence for several seconds before responding, "You keep track of me?"

"I don't have a choice."

"Wait a second. You spy on me? All the time? And you're just now getting around to mentioning this?"

"It's not spying, Lisa. I don't close my eyes and watch you take a shower."

Her eyes widened at the thought, and she opened her mouth as if to say something, but no words came out.

"I couldn't even if I wanted to," he cut in, interrupting the brewing outrage. "It doesn't work that way. You, Megabyte, Jade. Everyone. You're all here." He tapped his temple again. "Usually," he added with a frown. "You know that. Or, you used to.

"I always know where you are, how you're feeling. When a Tomorrow Person dies . . ." he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard. ". . . the loss . . . we feel the loss. The part that we share . . . is gone."

She nodded silently. "But I didn't die," she said. "I think I would remember that. I can't seem to forget the last time it happened."

"No," he agreed. "You didn't die. You just . . . I'm not even sure how to describe it. It's like it went blank. You were still there, in my head, but . . . you weren't. I didn't know where you were anymore."

"Do you have *any* idea how many people there are in the world who I could wish had the same problem?" She pressed the heel of one hand to her forehead and held it, eyes closed, for a long moment. The ship hummed and moaned in the background, like it was trying to answer her question.

"Okay," she said. "You said the ship wanted something from one of us. Apparently that person is me. Here I am." She dropped her hand back to her side, acutely conscious of the slight quiver in her fingers that she couldn't seem to bring under control. "This is all your fault," she directed to the central column.

It moaned in response, the voices of thousands of generations of Tomorrow People past and yet to come trying to speak through alien machinery that had been broken long before the rise of earth civilization.

"Okay, but why *me*?" She turned suddenly to face Adam. "Why *now*?"

"Maybe she knows you, goes to your school?" he suggested.

"Too young," Lisa argued. "She couldn't be older than fifteen." Which was true, although there had been something about her that seemed much harder. When the girl looked at her, it wasn't with the innocence Lisa had come to expect from fifteen-year-olds. Including herself at that age, though she had fought hard and often to deny it then.

"Is there anything else you remember. Anything, at all?" Adam was leaning against the wall that looked out onto the ocean. He showed no signs of having been awakened by her dream, but there were many times Lisa questioned if he slept. She knew he pretty much lived in the spaceship and he cared for the Tomorrow People like his own. She didn't know if there was another place he called home, or another group of people he called family.

With a shake of her head she answered, "Nothing. The first time, I guess it was her bedroom we were in. She mostly just acted strange and cryptic. All this stuff about me being able to hear her, *and* she knew my name."

"So she's telepathic."

"No kidding. The second time, well I already told you what happened the second time. And it sounded like it's happened to her before, more than once." She sucked in her lower lip, then added, "I think maybe he was a Tomorrow Person too."

That got Adam's attention. He looked at her squarely, focused on her with an attention that would be frightening coming from anyone else. "How? Can you be sure?"

She returned his gaze, wanting him to understand exactly what this piece of information meant. "His name is Alejandro de los Reyes."

"That's why the ship . . . ." Adam gazed off into the distance, his brow furrowed in thought. He was dressed as always in a simple, loose-fitting t-shirt and jeans. He should have looked like any other young adult. But partially turned, with the dim light catching his profile and casting his face into shadows, he looked like anything but.

"Are they Tomorrow People?" Lisa asked when his silence grew too long.

He shook his head. "We haven't had any new break-outs since Rachel." Rachel was the blonde American who came into her own during the height of summer a few months back, Lisa remembered. "I suppose they could be people who're about to break out," Adam added.

"I don't think so," Lisa responded slowly. "There was something just . . . wrong . . . about this, about her. I can't put my finger on it--" she stopped in frustration, searching her thoughts for just the right description, and coming up blank. "You'd see it too if you met her."

[So, introduce us,] Adam said, projecting the thought right into her head.

"Don't *do* that," she said, rounding on him with finger upraised.

"You needed to know I'm serious," he answered. "Introduce us."

"Adam, I don't even know if I *can*," she protested. "I mean, what if she doesn't contact me again?"

"Do you think she's contacting you?"

Lisa scowled. "What else would you call it?"

He crossed the ship to sit cross-legged in one of the round portals that led out of the main room, like a guru sitting in meditation on top of a mountain. Through closed eyes he looked up at the ceiling, as if concentrating on a sound he could barely hear. "Maybe you're contacting her," he suggested. "Maybe she's a Tomorrow Person from another time or another planet, and you've reached out to her." When his eyes opened again, Lisa made sure her face expressed every bit of doubt and disgust she could muster. "Maybe not," he conceded, looking a little sheepish.

"No," Lisa said, just to make sure he understood. "There is no way this would be happening if it had been up to me to start it. Don't even try to blame me."

"I'm not blaming you."

"Good, then we agree that she's the one causing all the problems. So, how do I make her stop?"

"Well, we have to figure out what she wants," he said, sounding reasonable.

Lisa kicked at some of the sand that covered the space ship floor. "When did it become 'we'? She came to me, remember? She's not your problem, yet."

She saw something darken in Adam's eyes, as if he were holding himself responsible for recent events; at his failure to protect her from the world she had opted out of. "If she's a Tomorrow Person, then she is my problem."

"Okay, so she's your problem. She's my problem. She's generally just a problem. A real problem child."

"We need to stop her before something happens," he said.

"What makes you think something is going to happen? Besides the fact that something has *already happened*." She heard her voice rising and forced herself to take a deep breath. In a more normal volume she added, "I'm sorry, but I'm having a very hard time remembering not to panic. I don't like the unexplained, and lately I seem to be surrounded with things I can't explain."

"I understand," he said quietly, twisting his hands together in his lap in a gesture of nervousness that didn't seem like one Adam would ever have reason to know. "What if we find Sara and ask her?"

That, she thought, was the elder speaking again. No matter how ridiculous a situation they found themselves in, Adam was able to establish and maintain the distance necessary to solve it. It was one of the elements that made him a good leader. And one of the elements, Lisa thought, that made her a lousy follower. Because while everyone else was happily following Adam's course of action, she was stuck trying to figure out how things got the way they were to begin with.

There was just one problem.

"How?" she asked.

He shrugged carelessly, like the situation wasn't anywhere near as complicated as they were making it seem. "We know her name," he said.

Lisa kicked again at the sand and started drawing concentric patterns with the toe of her shoe. "And we're supposed to do what? Look her up in the phone book?"

"Sure."

"Which one? There're probably dozens of Grimms in my town alone and we don't even know if she's in my town. We don't even know if she's in my country." Why was she having a bad feeling about this? Why did she feel like she was being set up?

Adam shrugged again. "You said she sounded American."

"That's what people say about Megabyte, too." The comeback dropped from her lips, followed by the realization that she had squashed any last chance at normalcy. The only kind of investigation left was the kind she did not, under any circumstances, want to participate in.

Adam's expression grew intense. Lisa didn't have to be telepathic to see the thoughts and plans racing through his mind. Each idea echoed on his face, his expressions shifting faster than Lisa could identify and keep up with them. "There is something we can try," he said at last.

"Don't," she interrupted. "Don't you dare suggest a mind merge. I don't even want to hear it!" That was something she'd never done, to share one's mind with another person . . . or worse, with the space ship . . . so completely that there was no telling where one mind left off and the next began. A mind merge was supposed to enhance memories, to bring to light the details that had been perceived but not noted. It was also supposed to let one view memories from a different perspective. It was an experience she didn't need.

"It may be the only way."

"Or it may be the wrong way. Did you think of that? Adam, I'm part of this because she came to me. I don't know if it'll happen again; I can only hope she'll find someone else's head to waltz around in tonight."

"You said this was the *second* time she came to you," he pointed out reasonably.

"It had better be the *last* time," she demanded. "I didn't ask for this, and I don't want it. All I want is for her to stop."

"Easy," Adam said. "We find out what she wants and we give it to her. Then she won't have to come to you anymore."

She stomped her foot down hard. "I am not doing a mind merge."

"Do you have any better ideas?"Adam asked, still sounding too reasonable. He sounded like he wanted her suggestions, and wasn't just spitting the question out as a dare he knew she couldn't accept.

The quiver in her hands grew stronger and she clasped them behind her back to hide the shaking from the one person who wouldn't fail to notice it. "I can't," she said, voice catching.

She could.

"Please?"

Did he see through the lie, she wondered? Could he know the choice he was asking her to make? He was asking too much.

"I can't," she repeated.

He didn't respond, verbally or telepathically; she could feel him standing somewhere just inside her personal space, hesitating, sizing up the situation and her determination. She almost wished he would touch her, place his hand on hers and say something uniquely Adam that would make her cave in and go with him. Instead, the silence stretched on. She was just about to look up, to apologize for disappointing him again, when she registered the electric charge in the air and flash of light that signaled his departing teleport.

"I'm sorry," she said to the empty ship. "I can't."

The moan it responded with left no doubt that it didn't believe her either.

Chapter 5

Professor Greenberg stood up at the blackboard in front of a lecture hall full of students in various states of repose. He was well past his prime, with deep creases lining his face, and the bulbous, venous nose of someone who'd had more than a few drinks. In one hand he held a piece of chalk, in the other an eraser. As fast as he could write, he also erased. The students were expected to take their notes in the few microseconds between the creation and destruction of each thought.

"The undeniable fact," he lectured, "is that the English language is always changing, always growing. While its primary ancestor was the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family, it is being raised by a truly global village, each of which has left -- and is leaving -- its mark on this linguistic child.

"Some of those marks can be traced to specific places and specific times, others are not so obvious. One of the questions on the final might deal with this topic, so listening now would be a good idea." He glared out at the lecture hall. Half the approximately 250 seats were empty, but weren't supposed to be. From somewhere near the middle of the hall came music, a walkman turned up just a notch too loud. The beat that poured from it sounded like the fight scene in a kung-fu movie.

Lisa couldn't hear the song well enough to recognize it; she doubted the Professor could hear it at all, or he would have kicked the student out of class twenty minutes ago. She shook it off and tried to focus on the lecture; her pen rested on the open notebook, all set to take notes as soon as she found find a break in the writing-and-erasing that would let her start. She couldn't seem to wake up today; couldn't gather the energy to keep up with the pace of the class. Being unable to sleep after returning from the Ship that morning, she had tried to get some homework done; she'd ended up sitting in the lounge, staring at a blank television screen.

Now she was sitting in an auditorium, staring at a Professor who might as well be lecturing in Tocharian. Her mind just wasn't on school.

Adam said he'd lost track of her.

She'd already yelled at him about that, he assured her that he wasn't spying on her, the matter was supposed to be closed.

Dammit. The matter wasn't closed. She did not like the idea of Adam, or anyone else, keeping tabs on her every move. It was for that reason that she had come to be where she was now. Not the college part. The part with the ever super-paranoid mom who made her phone in every day and who questioned anyone who looked at either of them even a second too long. A mom who did not know her nineteen year old daughter was dating, and wouldn't approve of it if she did.

Because once someone had tried to keep track of them, and it had nearly gotten them both killed.

Adam had meant to be comforting. He wasn't. It could *never* be a comfort that someone would both have the ability to know her mind and would choose to use it. Lisa learned that lesson too well. She felt a shiver run up her spine. She pondered this for a moment, then realized with surprise that the shiver came not from knowing that Adam hadn't just let her walk out of his life, but with the knowledge that she expected nothing else from him.

Lisa had long known she would grow up to be important. Really important. Her earliest memories were daydreams: the kind of super hero stories where the bad guy only looked monstrous, the challenges were right within her ability to overcome, and she always, always finished on top. In her dreams she was rich, powerful, and subject to no one. She lived immersed in the unspoken admiration of all around her.

When she turned twelve, she packed those dreams away along with her Barbies, just another toy outgrown. Lisa Davis didn't have time for heroics anymore: she had boys, clothes, and a reputation to worry about. She was a teenager who had a woman to become.

Then came the talent show, the one where she teleported in front of a room full of people.

And it wasn't a fantasy anymore. It wasn't a daydream where she could manipulate the outcome until it suited her needs; where she could look at all the people who made her life difficult and think, "If only you knew."

Now she worried about exactly that: who knew? After her mom was captured and held hostage, after she was subjected to that horrible *thing* that destroyed her ability to think, after her new found friends had nearly died trying to save them . . . After all that, she learned that wealth, power and freedom didn't belong to people who had something to exploit. She figured the only way to ever be safe again was to make sure no one knew the truth. If she didn't acknowledge her powers, she wouldn't use them. Then, maybe, she could forget she wasn't just like everyone else sitting in this classroom. Maybe, someday, everyone who knew better would also forget. And Lisa Davis would be once again left alone to grow into the woman she always wanted to be.

Except it wasn't quite that easy, as last night so succinctly reminded her. Sometimes, she was learning, she had to be a person she *didn't* want to be.

Like right now: She wanted to be angry. Adam had reached into her head without being invited, had reminded her of a part of her life she didn't look back on fondly. But she knew that even for all the distance she had tried to put between them, there was a connection that hadn't been severed -- because she could still reach back. Adam had let her walk away, but he couldn't let her disappear. That wasn't in her nature.

The dream. That wasn't his fault. Sara had come to her, twice, and would probably keep coming to her until she figured out why. She sighed into her pillowed arms. Of all the problems she thought she'd find in college, this hadn't even made the list. But, it wasn't in her nature to turn down a request for help.

"Miss Young," the professor said, interrupting her thoughts. "Perhaps you could tell us what happened in 1066?" He sounded smug, proud to be calling her on not paying attention.

For just a second she panicked. That date was important. She remembered it from her attempt at studying the other day; it was on the list, one of those dates for which she had neglected to write down an explanation.

"Norman conquest," she said, pulling the answer from the professor's head, too distracted to care about the morality or hypocrisy of it. "William the Bastard of Normandy became William the Conqueror when he defeated the English King Harold at the Battle of Hastings." She spoke the words without emotion; she had none to spare on him.

"Ummm . . . thank you," she heard the professor answer. He turned back to the board and started to write, the chalk squealing on each down stroke. "Historical accounts tell us that King William spoke Norman French. When he moved to England, he brought all of his French speaking friends with him and, out of them, created the new nobility of England. . . ."

Adam had suggested a mind-merge. He knew how she felt about her powers, and about the Ship. Yet of all the possible options, that was what he decided was needed. Perhaps it was. While she had been off trying to live her quiet life, he'd been left to lead the Tomorrow People alone. It had changed him, but she couldn't bring herself to believe that Adam would make any decisions without at least attempting to take the thoughts and feelings of the others into account. If he said mind-merge, it was because he believed it was the best option. The only option?

As much as she hated to admit it, she didn't seem to be getting much of a choice about her involvement. The part of her that knew that her years of solitude were a temporary reprieve, knew also that the time of reprieve was at an end.

Once she had promised to return to the island, to Adam. She had said the words without understanding what she was leaving or what she would be returning to. Still, she had meant them.

It seemed as if someone were making sure she kept that promise, for real this time.

"That was *tight*," a voice announced in her ear.

Lisa started. Her pen careened across the page, leaving a black ink trail.

"You put him right down. He thought he gonna make an example of you. You made *him* the example." Each word had the initial syllable emphasized.

"Isaac," she breathed. For some reason she had been expecting Adam. "Hi. You made it to class."

Isaac jumped over the row of seats and threw himself down into the seat next to Lisa. He was wearing a ratty gray sweatshirt, the sleeves torn off, over a forest green long-underwear shirt. It looked like he'd dressed in a hurry. Around his neck were a pair of headphones from which came the same driving beat Lisa had heard earlier.

"Yeah, I made it. Last week and all. Gotta put in an appearance some time." Isaac reached down to the walkman hooked on his belt and shut off the music. "Let's get gone; nothing here worth stickin' around for."

"But the class--" Lisa started to say, then stopped and looked around. The class was over. The blackboard was wiped clean and everyone was gone, including the Professor.

"Sucked. Yeah, I know." Isaac finished for her. "What say we get outta here?" He stood up and held out his hand to her.

Lisa closed her notebook, shoved it into her bookbag, then took the offered hand. She kept hold of it while they negotiated down the narrow aisle, up the stairs and out the door into a day that threatened at Springtime. The air was warm enough that she didn't need to zip her jackets; Isaac wasn't even wearing a jacket. Passing students walked with a bounce in their steps that hadn't been present for weeks.

"So," he asked, "What's the plan? We've got a whole evening in front of us. No more classes. I refuse to study anymore today. Gotta have a brain break."

"Actually," she answered, "We don't. I have to catch up with someone."

"You have something better to do than hang out with me?" Isaac looked at her in disbelief. "I thought candles, hot chocolate, marshmallows, a rented movie we have no intention of watching . . ."

"I wish I could," she responded. "It sounds so warm and cozy." She sidled a little closer to him and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "It's just that I've got other plans."

"But you ain't gonna tell me what they are?" Isaac sounded offended.

"There's not much to tell," she said with a shrug.

Isaac removed his arm. "Why don't you tell me anyway," he suggested. "Who're you going out with? Where are you going? How long is it going to take? Maybe we can get together later tonight?"

They stopped walking and Lisa turned to face him. "What's with all the questions? Don't you trust me?" They were standing in a small courtyard around which the main buildings of the campus sprawled. The grass was dead; the defrosting ground squelched under their feet. Two guys, both with their heads covered by red bandanas, walked by hand in hand.

"The world's a big, bad place," Isaac said. "I like to know what my girl is up to. Gotta know she's safe."

She narrowed her eyes. "You sound like my mother. Why does everyone act like I'm about to jump off a cliff and they have to step in and save me? I'm not a lemming. And I'm *not* perpetually on the verge of running off and doing something stupid."

"Tell me the truth, Lisa. You seein' someone else?"

"Don't be ridiculous," she snapped. "If we're going to stay together, you need to start trusting me. You also need to realize that I had a life before you, and I still have one that you're not always going to be part of." With a shake of her head she started walking away. "When you figure out how to deal with that, give me a call."

She didn't look back to see what, if any, expression he had.

Chapter 6

The ship seemed foreboding this time, dark and silent, as if warning them from what they were about to undertake.

A short time ago she had stated her resolve to do what it took to stop a return visit from Sara; now she wished she had stuck with her first impression. She should have stayed out. "Adam?" Lisa began, nervous.

In response to her unasked question, Adam grabbed her hand and gave it a light squeeze. "It's okay," he said. "You're not alone."

No, Lisa thought, that was the whole problem. She gripped Adam's hand harder. "What do I do?"

He led her to one of the seats suspended like a see-saw from the central column. She touched it, letting her fingers drift over the cool metal, feeling the force that flowed within in. This chair, as did the ship and everything that belonged to it, pulsed. Its energy source was something more than electricity. It had life. Just sitting in that seat would further connect her to the ship than she had ever been before. Even those many years ago when the ship had reached into her mind and body and brought her back from the brink of a drowning death -- even then she hadn't had to surrender herself as she was about to do.

She looked to Adam again, trusting him to guide her. His brown eyes held only understanding as he waited for her to finish her explorations, to make her own peace with the ship. "It's okay," he repeated.

Lisa believed him, even though a part of her was busy informing her that it was way too late for okay. She lowered herself into the seat, on guard against the moment when the ship would creep into her mind and take it from her.

"Relax." she heard Adam whisper. Then she was flying towards the ceiling, stomach dropping away behind her. She opened her eyes and looked down. Her feet were dangling in the air meters off the floor, where she could see footprints echoed in the sand. Adam wasn't there.

She fought down a moment of panic and twisted around, scanning the interior of the ship. There, on the other side of the column, Adam was climbing into the counter-balance seat. He settled himself, his body looking relaxed and comfortable. Of course, Lisa realized, he'd done this many times before. Sharing his thoughts with the ship was something he'd done more freely than sharing them with his human companions.

Just as suddenly as her seat had raised, it began to lower. She straightened herself up, conscious of the lack of seat belts or other safety restraints. Soon the seats settled into a gentle see-saw motion, up and down. It was impossible not to give herself up to the slow swinging, especially since she hadn't been sleeping well. She let her eyes close, felt her breathing slow.

Lisa became aware of a presence in her mind which she recognized as the ship. All predictions to the contrary, there was nothing cold or alien about it. She pushed and felt it give. It understood her concerns, would stay only as long as she allowed it. She pushed harder, looking for the part that belonged to Adam.

[I'm here.] She heard.

[Good,] she answered sincerely, before looking around.

The ship had taken the two past mind merge to another place entirely: the place Lisa had been in her dreams the previous nights. It was as gray and ill-defined as before, lacking even the door. Adam was nowhere to be seen, although she could still feel him in the back of her mind. Knowing he was there lent her confidence.

The breath she meant to spend in a sigh of relief caught in her throat as Sara materialized inches away.

"Are you going to make it stop, Lisa?" Sara asked. She stood stiffly, drawn in on herself.

"I don't know," Lisa answered, honestly. She had no idea what they were here to do. If Adam knew, as she suspected he did, he wasn't telling. They had worked out that they needed to do a mind-trawl -- although how that was different from a mind merge, she also didn't know. The rest was still to be seen. "We're going to try."

"You came back," Sara said, with a nod of finality. "You can make it stop."

"Lisa," came Adam's voice. The girls turned as a unit towards the door. It was open, Adam framed in the doorway. There was a tenseness in his stance that Lisa could only attribute to anger, an emotion she couldn't recall seeing on Adam before.

"What is it?" Lisa asked. She felt awareness of the ship's presence awaken in her mind; with it, a stronger awareness of Adam. Her judgement had been sound, as had his. She should have stayed out, and the ship hadn't wanted them to leave this alone. With its help, they would be able to safely cross that threshold, as Adam had just demonstrated by coming through the other side.

"You can't," Sara whispered, crossing her arms over her chest. "That's not an exit." Then, true to form, she flashed out of existence.

Adam didn't even blink. "I think you should see this," he said.

****

Grimm found his daughter staring in the full length mirror mounted inside his closet door. It was a relic of a time when he'd had the storybook family. Before his wife left for greener pastures, and his daughters went missing, each in their own way. There were as many memories associated with that piece of glass as with the wedding band he still wore, and it was one of the few things that still interested Sara. She returned to it time and again, with an uncanny stubbornness. He could usually find her eyeing her reflection for what he could only imagine were signs of betrayal.

He set a loose pile of ungraded research papers on his bed and sat down next to it to wait. Although he seemed to be doing a lot of waiting recently, it never seemed anything other than natural. She was all he had.

Sara's hands were pressed against the glass, the weight of her body pushing the door against the bedroom wall. He couldn't tell if she was looking at her reflection, the reflection of the room, or something else entirely.

"What do you see?" he asked her. He knew that her answer, if she answered, wouldn't clarify anything. In his imagination, he could hear her aimless comment about the ocean that he'd already heard so many times.

He was still watching her some while later, with the same fascination with which a parent watches a sleeping child, when she stiffened suddenly, her fingers clenching against the mirror as though seeking to claw through it. Rising to his feet, Grimm stepped towards her, ready to catch her and pin her arms if necessary to keep her from causing damage to herself. Although he knew she'd struggle against him, fighting him for every moment of contact he forced upon her, he knew there was nothing else he could do. There was no compromising about his child's safety, even if she wouldn't recognize the efforts for what they were.

"You can't," he heard her say, as if she knew what he was prepared to do. "That's not . . . ." her voice trailed off and the last part came out unintelligible. Grimm's breath caught in this throat, and he found himself unable to move; for a few seconds, his daughter had sounded like her old self.

It was enough for him to ask, "That's not what?" before it occurred to him that she'd no more answer that question than any of the hundreds of others he'd asked over the last few months.

"Lisa? Adam?" she called into the mirror.

Who? he thought, checking his knowledge of his daughters' former friends for anyone with either of those names. Despite their commonality, he could come up with no matches. The twins had always been gregarious children, counting friends in numbers he couldn't comprehend. But he was confident that he knew, or at least knew of, all the ones who were more than classroom acquaintances. Since Clara's disappearance, the friend's numbers had dwindled to nothing. He couldn't blame them. Still, it made him wonder all the more to who those two names she was calling belonged.

"Lisa?" she said again, continuing to claw at the glass. Her efforts were having no effect except to leave finger streaks on the surface. Nevertheless, Grimm found himself wanting to help her tear through the reflection, actually believing it possible for a moment. Just when he was about to break his immobility to help her, she released a shuddering breath, sank to the floor, and curled into a tight ball.

Any moment of lucidity she'd found slipped away and she started to rock.

****

Lisa hesitated for a moment. She had come this far already against her better judgment; her curiosity wouldn't allow her to turn away now. She stepped towards the door.

Although nothing moved, while she had been standing some distance away, now she was crossing that threshold that had so occupied her thoughts for the past forty-eight hours.

She wasn't even granted a chance to gain her bearings.

"What would be enough?" a boy shouted. "Tell me."

In front of their eyes, Lisa and Adam watched a scene unfold; the participants coalescing out of the gray in the same way as Sara had appeared and disappeared. The one shouting was the Hispanic youth whom Lisa had seen before. He held a glossy booklet of some sort in his hand, brandishing it at an unseen audience.

"I get good grades. I stay out of trouble. Ay, but that's not enough for mis padres." He paused as though listening to a response, then shook his head vehemently. "Si, this es my son the doctor," he said, mocking. He spoke with a Mexican accent, his words seeming to be a random mix of Spanish and English. "This," he added, jabbing himself in the chest, "es your son the actor. That will have to be enough."

"I dunno," another male voice said, the words overlapping but independent of the first speaker. "Just . . . don't feel like it." Lisa turned to see a young red-head leaning bonelessly against the air, as if against an invisible wall. He had the kind of round, open face about which one always seemed to assume perpetual happiness. Except he was looking at his non-present conversation partner through half-lidded eyes, his mouth sculpted in frown, his shoulders slumped, hands shoved in the pockets of his high school letter jacket. Stitched across the right breast was the name 'Eric'.

"Yeah, I know that," the youth continued. His words sounded like a protest, but his tone didn't change. "Why can't you just leave me alone?" Despite his countenance, there was nothing happy about this youth, and Lisa sensed that everyone except him knew it.

She turned again towards a touch on her arm, and saw Adam pointing at another scene, already in progress. A young girl, just entering the peak of her adolescence, sat on the air, in the same way as the redhead had leaned against an invisible wall. A black seat belt strap contrasted against the light blue baby-doll shirt the girl wore; the strap began in nothing and buckled into nothing, and was visible only where it touched her.

"That looks like Sara," Lisa whispered to Adam. He put a finger to his lips and gestured for her to keep watching.

"Dad, I'm not making it up," she protested. She twisted in her seat to look at someone to her left. "She just disappeared. She just broke the seal on her test with her pencil, which is silly if you think about it cuz what if the pencil breaks while you're doing that, and then you have to use your second pencil and that breaks right away, and then what are you supposed to do? So she broke the seal and opened the test booklet like we were instructed, then poof! All gone. The sound wasn't a poof, really, but I don't know how to make it. It was cool."

She listened to the silence respond, then shook her head to the negative. "Nuh-uh. How am I supposed to know where she is?" Another pause while the occupant of the driver's seat spoke back. Sara started to lean back in the seat, then stiffened, sitting bolt upright. She turned again to the driver and spoke. Her voice was clear and high; her words were enunciated and happy. "I can hear the ocean," she said.

Then she collapsed, as if gravity had just become too much of a challenge. The muscles in her face slackened, her eyes dulled and lost focus, her body seemed to shrink. She sank against the seat, propped into place by the car door and the seat-belt.

"That was . . . interesting," Lisa said. She found herself leaning towards the scene, like trying to watch a show on television with bad reception. With conscious effort she pulled back, putting distance between herself and the scenario that was playing again from the beginning. "'I can hear the ocean'," she quoted. "I wonder what that was all about."

"The ocean?" Adam repeated. "That's Sara?" He sounded as though he were struggling to remember something very important. "She was . . . there was . . . something . . . ." He shook his head.

"There was what?" Lisa asked. "You knew this was big; that's why you made me come here. Why? What's so important about these three people?"

Adam shook his head again. "I don't know. I --"

"I have to leave," Adam was saying, but it was a different Adam. He looked several years younger, several years less mature. His hair was long, like it had been when Lisa first met the Australian, pulled back in a pony tail. "I . . ." he closed his eyes, an internal struggle visible on the lines of his face. "I'm sorry . . . I didn't want things to end like this."

There was that interminable silence; the one of the other person or persons responding. The silence was almost palpable; even the other voices had ceased as if out of respect for this moment. The response was brief, though it seemed too long.

The other Adam's voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, heavy with emotion. "I didn't want things to end."

More of that silence, except it wasn't. In the background was a sound, too far away to hear. Lisa felt it in the very back of her head, where sounds on the cusp of human hearing could sometimes be sensed. The other person was responding. If only she could hear them.

Lisa turned to look at her Adam just as the younger one started to speak. If she had had any doubts about the vision, they disappeared as she watched the elder mouthe the words along with the younger, "I didn't understand. I know it's too late to apologize, but I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"So you did exist before you broke out." The words were out of Lisa's mouth before she could stop them. She spoke while looking back and forth between the two Adams, comparing them. The weight of leadership wasn't evident on the younger, but he wasn't without responsibility, as evidenced by the scene playing out.

Only when the elder tore his eyes from his younger-self and looked at her did she realize how callous she had sounded. "Oh, I didn't mean --"

"It's okay," Adam said, though he clearly wasn't okay with a piece of his past being laid bare. "Let's get out of here."

"Who were you saying good bye to?" Lisa asked, not moving from her spot.

Adam didn't respond, instead oddly mimicking his younger self, eyes closed, hands locked together. His throat worked in a swallow, then another, as if he were fighting back tears.

"Did you love her?" she continued, taking a wild guess at the missing person.

"It doesn't matter anymore," Adam finally said.

"Adam," Lisa said, putting a hand on his shoulder, for the first time initiating physical contact with him. "I know it's a lot, being a Tomorrow Person. I do know, and I think I'm starting to understand what you mean about not being able to go back. But I learned something important when I busy ignoring you." It was her turn to find strength behind closed eyes, and when she met his sable gaze with her own, she couldn't help smiling as she gave advice to the advisor. "Sometimes, you have to be human too."

"I am human."

"No," she contradicted. "You're the leader of the Tomorrow People. You're the first of a potential next stage in human evolution. You're a shoulder to cry on and the person we turn to when we need help. You live in a tent on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, for crying out loud.

"But when was the last time you were Adam Newman? *Just* Adam Newman?"

Adam broke their tenuous contact to look again at his younger self, still caught in the act of saying good bye. Like the others, the Hispanic, the red head, and the girl, Adam's scene was playing continuously, all of them overlapping one another.

"That's what I thought," Lisa continued. "You expect us to trust you implicitly, and we do. But you don't have to be strong all the time. We need to be able to confide in you, but we also need you to be able to confide in us. We're a team."

"You left the team, Lisa," Adam quietly reminded her.

Lisa sighed. "That's what I thought, too."

Chapter 7

But mother . . ." a new, but known, voice whined. Lisa didn't have to face it to know what words were going to come next. In her mind's eye she could see the hideous pink formal dress; could feel her mother's hands picking at her, straightening imaginary wrinkles, removing imaginary dust particles.

"The only actors in them are dogs," she heard herself say. That was the night of the talent show, the one she hadn't wanted to go to because she knew she'd be the only one there over the age of eight. But her mother had insisted and, as usual, got what she wanted since she had cultivated her selective hearing to an art form. It had been a talent show, all right, but not for the talent she had wanted to show. That was the night Lisa had teleported for the first time, and started the chain of events from which she had only thought herself freed.

What had sounded like reasonable arguments at the time now sounded like the complaints of a spoiled child. Embarrassing complaints that she was glad no one but Adam was witness to.

Unless . . .

And there was Sara again. The same face, same long hair. This new sequence started off to the side, almost out of sight. The sense of movement got Lisa's attention first. She glanced at it, pulled her head back in surprise, then whispered, "Adam, look."

They saw the teenager walking through endless space; there were no walls, decorations or carpet, so no indication of where she was or what she was doing. She stopped and looked around, as if planning her next move. Pulling a small vial out of her jeans, she unscrewed the top and waved it beneath her nose. With a satisfied nod, she leaned across something invisible and started to pour out the liquid, one careful drop at a time. Beneath her bracing arm, a bed became visible. With it, the older Asian woman who was napping on it, her mouth open. The woman wore a tailored black business suit minus the blazer, and was prone on top of the untucked bed sheets.

The drops fell into the woman's mouth. She snorted, her face screwing up in displeasure, but didn't awaken. Two more drops, and she reacted again, this time in pain. She sat up suddenly, awake, hands clawing at her chest. Turning a panicked gaze to the girl, she mouthed something undiscernible. In response, the girl pocketed the now empty vial and vanished.

She didn't fade out of view; she teleported, complete with the flash of light and the pop of imploding air.

Then the whole scene erased, as if it never happened.

Lisa opened her mouth to comment, and couldn't control the rush of words that followed. "That was Sara. Did you see it, Adam? She's one of us for sure. I know a teleport when I see one, though I have no idea how to explain the rest of what we saw. That was her memory. Adam, we know she's here. I think they're all here: Alejandro, and, what was that guys' name? Eric," she said, recalling the stitching on his jacket.

"They are," he said, simply. "They're not supposed to be, but they are."

"I saw that guy walk through the door, and now we're watching one of his memories," she continued, oblivious to his comment. "We came through, and--" she made a vague gesture with her hands that meant see for yourself', "and Sara's here, and . . . she said there had been others. How many others?

"What kind of others?" she stopped, eyes widening as she started figuring out the answers to her own questions. "Oh God. She *told* me the door wasn't an exit."

Before Adam could speak again, she was striding back across the threshold, back into the world of grey inhabited by one lonely soul.

"You have to let them go," she yelled, willing the girl to hear, wherever she was. "You brought them here, and you're keeping them here. But they don't belong here, Sara."

"No one's ever answered before, Lisa," came the timid response. "I told them not to go through. I told them, and they didn't answer."

"That's no excuse," Lisa said. "No excuse. Can't you see that you're the one keeping them here?" Then, recalling another part of their first conversation, Lisa asked, "What are you waiting for?"

The answer was slow in coming. At some point she became aware of Adam standing next to her, and then of his presence in her mind, lending strength and patience. The ship was there too, just a dull hum in the back of her consciousness. Then both feelings started to recede, and she could feel the mind merge coming to an end.

[Wait,] she protested, struggling against waking up. Lisa reached to grab the teen's wrist, a temporary anchor she hoped until she at least got that question answered.

Instead Sara froze into place, a stricken look on her face. Her skin had drained of color. "There will be no touching," Sara informed her in a flat, clipped voice. "Not at all."

Sara struggled to release herself from Lisa's grip; Lisa held on tight. This wasn't the real world, and physical contact here abided by no rules except those believed by the minds of the participants. In that, Lisa had the advantage because her mind was set. [Sara,] she warned, tightening her hold.

[We have to go,] Adam said, sounding distantly panicked.

The girl struggled, and Lisa could feel the reality of the ship begin to dominate over the perception of the mind merge. At the last moment, Sara stopped fighting the contact and, with a baleful expression, rammed Lisa's mind with her own, hitting her with every thought at her disposal in one, unfocussed attack.

****

Lisa woke up this time passing through all the stages of sleep painfully and with great reluctance. A headache pounded in her temples that she knew would get worse when she opened her eyes. She'd never had a hangover, but she was pretty sure if couldn't be anywhere near as bad as this.

Lisa curled her arm around the pillow, burying her head in the security it promised . . . if she could return to sleep. Instinctively, she turned towards the wall, towards the darkest part of the room. It wasn't night time; the pink light she saw behind her eyelids gave mute evidence to the time of day. It hurt her head more just to think about the increased brightness if she succumbed and opened her eyes.

But sleep would not come. It wasn't dark enough, the noises were all wrong, and now her throat burned with an abrupt announcement of dehydration.

She gave in, turned away from the wall and let her eyes flutter open. The light wasn't quite as bright as she had anticipated, but it still burned.Then it began to resolve: first into colors, then shapes, then textures.

The color and shapes and textures became Adam. He was leaning over her, concern marring his gentle face. Out of nowhere a hand pressed against her forehead. It felt cool and dry, and then her head didn't hurt quite so much.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

The response stuck in her throat. She tried to muster enough saliva to swallow, relieve the soreness long enough to answer, but to no avail. With a shake of her head, she collapsed back against the pillow.

Somehow Adam seemed to understand anyway. He disappeared from her view, then returned a minute later with a coffee mug. Together they got her sitting up enough to drink the cold water, which almost hurt her throat more than the light had hurt her eyes. This pain was welcomed, though, it was temporary in itself and it banished another. She accepted the mug from Adam and pressed this new coolness to her forehead.

"I know I'm going to regret this," Lisa said, "but . . . what happened back there?" She was able to sit up now as straight as the limited space under the bunk bed allowed, and she was hot. Too hot. She pushed the blankets down the end of the bed; blankets, she saw, which had been pulled up around her as if she had been tucked in.

"You passed out. I couldn't wake you," he answered simply.

That explained the tucking in. "So you brought me here," she said. To her dorm room. Thank goodness Tanya hadn't been there.

"Yes. The Ship thought you'd be safer there." He took a seat on the floor, crossed his legs, then leaned forward with his elbows planted on his knees. "I thought you wouldn't want to hang around there if you didn't have to."

"Thank you," she said.

He hesitated, then continued, "Megabyte and Jade were on their way to the ship."

"I--"

"I brought you here before they arrived."

She blinked, considering what he just told her. He did understand. Without being told, without the topic even coming up, Adam understood that she wasn't ready yet to deal with the other Tomorrow People. He was going to let her readjust on her own terms. Or, at least, the terms Sara allowed them. "Thank you," she said again. "I mean it."

"You're welcome."

She took a long sip of the water, then turned so she was sitting on the side of the bed instead of laying in it. "So, did we learn anything? Was it worth it?"

"I think the Ship was trying to give us some answers," Adam replied.

"Answers? It didn't show us anything that made any sense." Lisa said, her memories of the mind-merge beginning to surface. "Wasn't this supposed to tell us what to do next?"

"It doesn't work like that," Adam said. "The Ship allows us to re-access information we all ready have. It'll show us what we need to know, but only if we already know it." He stood up and started to pace, the nervous energy that had long been his hallmark needing outlet. "This time it connected us with Sara, so her thoughts were in the mix too. It must have had a reason for showing us the things it did."

"It wanted to confuse us?" Lisa asked, with mock hopefulness.

"The Ship isn't malicious, Lisa. It's on our side; it wants to help us as much as it can."

"I mean, what did we learn?" she continued as if Adam hadn't spoken, "Sara's doing something to some people for some reason that's causing big problems." She scowled. "That was so vague it was barely a sentence. Why didn't the Ship just tell us what to do? There was a lot of stuff happening in my head, but it didn't show us the one thing we went there to find out: how to find her."

"Maybe it did," Adam said, growing thoughtful.

"What?" Lisa demanded. "What did you see?"

"I think we should look in the obituaries." He started pacing again.

"You think she's dead! Then how did the Ship connect us with her? Don't tell me that ghosts can mind merge."

"No."

Lisa sighed "Good. That was just too creepy. I don't even want to think about ghosts."

"I think she killed someone."

"That's not any better! Where'd you get that from?" Lisa stood up, almost hitting her head on the top bunk in the process. "Please stop pacing; you're making me nervous. We can't kill, Adam. Remember? Or did something change while I was out of the loop?"

Adam shook his head. "No, and yes."

"Oh, that clears things right up."

He sat on the edge of Tanya's desk. "Did you hear what happened over the summer?"

"Uh-uh. But I'll take a guess and say it wasn't any fun."

The corner of Adam's mouth quirked up in an involuntary smile. "No, it wasn't any fun," he said. He pushed a stack of books out of the way, got more comfortable on the desk, and told her the whole story. There had been yet another in a seemingly endless line of secret government projects intended to use telepaths and teleporters as spies and assassins. In the end, they had caught the people responsible, and learned of at least a dozen teenagers who should have become Tomorrow People. Their destiny had been stolen when they'd been forced to commit the one crime of which Tomorrow People can't even conceive.

"That's awful!" Lisa responded, fighting off a wave of revulsion. "You think she was part of that?"

"I think it's a place to start. Where's the library?" Adam held up his hands, palms facing her.

He wants to teleport there? Oh, won't that be a riot . . . in more ways than one. "About two blocks from here," she answered, deliberately not matching his gesture. "but," she looked at his feet on which he had slipped a pair of laceless shoes appropriate for the beach and little else, "You're going to need socks."

"Socks?"

"And a jacket. Remember, December in this part of the world means winter. It's cold outside. And we can't just teleport in." Off his confused look, she explained, "Finals are next week; the place is going to be packed."

The sentence still hung in the air when the door to the room crashed open.

"This is so unfair!" Tanya burst into the room, a crumpled sheaf of papers clutched in her right hand. "Can you believe how unfair this is? I worked on this forever, and that dumb professor practically flunked me. I can't believe he *did* this to me?" She held aloft the sheaf, revealing it to be a research paper. Lines of tight, red writing marred the lower half of the cover page.

Lisa blinked once, trying to adjust to the shift in conversation. "What did who do to you?" she asked, before it occurred to her that it might have been better to keep her mouth shut. She grimaced as that thought caught up with her, then held her breath while she awaited the forthcoming barrage of words.

Beside her, Adam seemed calm, almost expectant of the interruption. But, the flicker of panic Lisa felt in her mind gave him away.

"That dumb professor. You know. I worked on this paper for, like, a whole day and he had to go and give me a B+. Can you believe it? He said it's too long, and," she squinted at the writing, "'the argument isn't carefully defended'. Yeah, whatever that means. Like you can deal with that topic in ten pages and even begin to stay what needs to be said. If he knew his material better, he'd know that this is an A paper."

"I know I'm going to regret this," Lisa said, "but which 'dumb professor'?"

"You know, Prof. G." Tanya stormed over to her desk, threw the paper on it, then picked it back up and tucked it into the lower drawer. "He's going to ruin my whole grade point average. And I'm never going to forgive you, either," she said, rounding on Adam.

He opened his mouth to respond, but she didn't give him the chance.

"We were supposed to have a coffee date? Or has Lisa been saying bad things about me again? Is that why you didn't show up? You told me you loved coffee, and I love coffee, so it just shows that we're destined for each other. We both love French Silk Mochas. How much more perfect is that? I waited for you for, like, hours at that coffee shop and you didn't even have the decency to show up. I have never been stood up before, and I'm not going to start tolerating it now." She glared at him. "Well, aren't you going to apologize?"

"Pardon?" Adam said, sounding more like he wanted to be anywhere else really fast.

"And you," Tanya continued, aiming her glare at Lisa, "How could you not tell me that the shop was closed? The sign on the window says that Health Officials closed it last semester. You know, you could have saved me tons of embarrassment if you'd mentioned *something*. I would have told you. But, no, you let me stand outside that shop, making a complete fool of myself. I hope no one saw me."

She stormed back across the room to her closet, where she began rooting through the clothes that threatened to burst out of it. "Now I'm going to have to change so no one recognizes me. Thanks a lot. I was hoping not to have to do laundry this weekend." She yanked something out of the closet that looked like a large, red t-shirt. Turning around, she held the hanger up under her chin, revealing the article to be a short sleeved dress that barely reached mid-thigh. "What do you think?"

"Umm, it's December," Lisa said, feeling oddly repetitive. "It's cold out. You're going to freeze if you wear that."

"Who's Professor G?" Adam asked.

"Greenberg," Lisa replied. "We have an English class with him. Why?"

"I don't know. It just feels important. I feel like there's something--"

"Greenberg? I don't think so," Tanya interrupted. "Greenberg is such a loser. I dropped his class like on the second day. I'm taking it with that other guy now. You know, the one with the beard."

"Beard?"

"I think he has a beard. Do you remember if he had a beard? No, you wouldn't, cuz you can't seem to remember *anything*. You need to pay attention better." She let the dress drop to the floor, turned around and began rooting through the closet again. Seconds later, she emerged with a black pantsuit. "He's the one with the kid. The papers went on and on about it over the summer. Like no one else ever had a kid run away before. Please. He's so mean he's probably got her locked in the attic."

Adam had a strange, thoughtful look on his face. "Is his name Grimm?" he asked while Tanya took a breath.

[What are you doing?] Lisa asked, his question catching her off guard.

[Playing a hunch,] Adam responded, then: [Welcome back.]

Tanya rolled her eyes. "Duh. I told you that. God." Without a comment, she added the pantsuit to the growing pile on the floor and returned to her closet.

Lisa turned to Adam slowly. "She is at this school. She's just not a student here. Come on." She pulled him into the hallway, making sure the door shut behind them. "Look, go home, get some socks on," she whispered, knowing that Tanya could listen through the door. "A jacket, too, if you have one. Then meet me . . ." She threw her hands up. "I don't know. Meet me at the English building."

"You know where this Professor is?"

"No. But if he teaches here, he's got to have an office. We find the office, we find him. The problem is catching him during office hours. Professors are notorious for scheduling their office hours on something other than Earth time."

Adam nodded, and looked up and down the hallway. The mural was finished, and for once since its inception, the hallway was empty. "The English building," he said.

"Yes. Find me."

He nodded again, then vanished.

Chapter 8

The tentative knock at his office door pulled Grimm from the nearly hypnotic task of grading homework assignments. He looked up at the two people who stood in the doorway, both of whom were the right age to be his students but neither were faces he'd seen staring at him in a lecture hall. The younger, a black teenager with a full face and intelligent eyes, looked far more nervous than a visit to a professor should warrant, unless she was one of those students who only showed up to the first and last day of class. Behind her stood a white man, taller than the woman by a few inches, older by a few years and obviously the moral support of the pair.

"Can I help you?" he asked, directing the question at the woman. He pasted an expression of polite interest on his face in case he was supposed to know her. There were so many faces and though he tried, he never could learn them all.

"Maybe," she replied, glancing down at her sneakers and then back up to him. "We wanted to talk you about Sara." The name came out as a question. She licked her lips and opened her mouth as if to say something more, then closed it.

"You are friends?" His eyebrows drew together as he tried to match their faces with any he might have known. The woman did look familiar, but he couldn't figure out why. The more he looked at her, the more he was certain she wasn't one of his students but that he did know her from somewhere.

"We've met," she said.

"I'm Adam," the young man introduced. "And this is Lisa."

Grimm was just rising out of his chair when the young man spoke up; he sat down quickly and appraised the two again. "Oh! . . . I -- she's mentioned you," he stammered after a second. "Please, come in." He indicated the folding chair in front of his desk, eyes darting around the small office as he looked for another available seat. There was none. He gave a shrug, raising his hands in apology, and rose to his feet, successfully this time. If they were going to stand, then so was he.

"She's mentioned us?" Lisa repeated, perplexed.

"Yesterday, in fact. She seemed worried about you. Are you okay? Of course you're okay. You're here--" He realized he was babbling even as the words spilled from his lips. In one of her stranger moments, Sara had called out two names. The fact that people bearing those names showed up at his door a day later shouldn't mean anything. It was a coincidence, nothing more. But even as he had the thought, he dismissed it as another rationalization that wasn't going to work. He knew his daughter had been calling for the people who stood before him now. He also knew that if he didn't rein in his tongue, they'd leave before he found out why they were here.

"Professor," Adam interrupted. "Sara's alive?"

"Of course she's alive," he answered.

The looks Lisa and Adam traded made it clear that they'd expected a different answer. "But . . we thought . . . I mean . . . ." Lisa threw her hands up. "I give up," she said. "This doesn't make any sense."

"Why would you think she's not alive?" he pressed. Even asking the question, he couldn't bring himself to say 'dead'. Dead was too final; saying it might jinx it into happening. Sara wasn't dead because he couldn't handle it if she left too.

They didn't have an answer. He could see it in their furrowed brows and down turned lips; in the way the woman looked like she wanted to walk right out the door and never return, in the way the man shoved his hands in his jean pockets because he'd become conscious of them hanging helpless at his sides.

Then it occurred to him who they were talking about. Not Sara after all. But they wouldn't have any reason to know that.

"Clara," he whispered. They had known something he didn't, and now he was sorry he'd wanted to find out.

"What?"

"Sara . . . and Clara. They're twins."

"You gave them rhyming names?" Lisa asked in disbelief. "Isn't that a little . . . cliche?"

"Their names came from something I was studying for my dissertation," he answered without apology. Centum/Satem. The name for a major division in the world's languages. Sharing those names with his newborn daughters seemed like a way to intertwine his work and home lives a little more; a professional in-joke as it were; and a kind of honorarium.

"That explains it," Adam interrupted, freeing a hand from his pocket to run it through his hair.

"It does?" Lisa asked at the same time as Grimm said, "Explains what?" They weren't talking about the names.

"You were right," Adam told Lisa. "She couldn't have done it. And *she* didn't."

He saw Lisa's eyebrow quirk up and some of the confusion disappear from her eyes. Adam's words either made sense to her or she was listening to an entirely different conversation. Possibly both. Grimm rubbed a knuckle against the bridge of his nose. "Now could you please explain your explanation?"

"It's kinda complicated," Lisa said.

"That much is obvious. Why don't we start with the reason you're here? You said --" And for the second time since their arrival, his mind blanked and his words cut off as his eyes came to rest on the manila folder that peeked at him from beneath a stack of research papers. With one hand, he slid the folder from beneath the stack and opened its worn cover. At the top sat a photo copy from the front page of the Virginia Post. Lisa's face stared out at him from a nest of slightly smeared copy.

He silently handed the page to her.

She accepted it; her mouth forming an "oh" as she registered what she held. Her teleporting act hadn't gone unnoticed, had in fact been caught on video by some proud father with a child in the talent show and a camcorder. That tape had earned Lisa coverage on the local news, and then an above-the-fold article in the local paper.

"Clara disappeared into thin air too," he informed them, all the hurt and worry he'd felt over the past few months welling to the surface. "I didn't see it, but Sara did. She told me about it. I . . . didn't believe her then. Do you know where she is?"

Adam seemed to be studying the books lining the wall nearest him as he answered, "We do."

"We do?" Lisa echoed.

"At least," the young man clarified, "we know what happened to her?"

"We do?" Lisa repeated. She looked hard at Adam, her gaze unwavering as she directed her next words back to Grimm. "He might. In fact, he probably does. But I have no idea what he's talking about, just for the re